Russia Adds President Putin And Kremlin Critic Alexei Navalny To List Of Terrorists And Extremists

Alexei Navalny, (Wikimedia Commons/Evgeny Feldman/Novaya Gazeta)

JAKARTA - Russia on Tuesday added imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and a number of his allies to a "terrorist and extremist" list, as authorities put further pressure on the opposition.

Navalny and a number of colleagues, including his close friend Lyubov Sobol, appeared in a database of prohibited individuals compiled by the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring (Rosfinmonitoring), on Tuesday.

The past year has seen an unprecedented crackdown on dissent in Russia, including the January jailing of President Vladimir Putin's main critic Navalny and the banning of his political organization. Almost all of his main allies, including Sobol, have left the country.

According to the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, which was declared extremist and shut down last year, a dozen Navalny allies were added to the list on Tuesday.

They include anti-corruption investigator Georgy Alburov, lawyer Vyacheslav Gimadi and several former coordinators of the Navalny regional office who were also branded extremists last year.

The decision puts them on a par with far-right nationalist groups and foreign terrorist organizations, including the Taliban and the Islamic State extremist group.

Sobol, 34, is a lawyer for the anti-corruption foundation Navalny and producer of an opposition politician's YouTube channel. He has been wanted by Russian police since October.

"Participating in elections and fighting corruption? Extremists," Lyubov Sobol tweeted, citing the Korea Times from AFP Jan. 25.

A demonstration of supporters of Alexei Navalny in Kazan, Russia. (Wikimedia Commons/Engelberthumperdink)

Earlier this month, two other close associates of Navalny Ivan Zhdanov and Leonid Volkov were added to the list. They mocked the "terrorist" tag on Tuesday.

Volkov, who used to oversee the Navalny regional office, said on Twitter that he was "proud to work in the 'extremist and terrorist' team.

"It's great that our super team of 'terrorists' are joined by such great people," Zhdanov, who heads the now disbanded Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Twitter.

Last month, investigators questioned several former regional naval coordinators, including Ksenia Fadeyeva, who is also a member of parliament in the Siberian city of Tomsk. He was also added to the "terrorist" list on Tuesday.

Navalny was detained in January 2021 upon arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a neurotoxin attack that he and the West blamed on the Kremlin. In February, he was jailed for more than two years on charges of long-standing fraud.

His poisoning and arrest sparked widespread condemnation abroad as well as sanctions from Western capitals. The European Parliament last year awarded Navalny the 'Sakharov Prize' for Freedom of Thought, after he was nominated but failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Investigators last year launched a new extremism probe into Navalny, which could see the opposition leader spend up to 10 more years in prison.

To step up a crackdown on critical voices in Russia, authorities have designated dozens of rights groups, media outlets, journalists and anti-Kremlin figures as "foreign agents".

To note, in December, a court ordered the closure of the country's most prominent rights group, Memorial.